Distant Star Is Roundest Object Ever Seen In Space
The star dubbed Kepler 11145123 is said to be the roundest natural object found in the universe so far. Various factors like gravity and speed of rotation are responsible for the shape of stars, and they aren't perfectly round naturally.
A team of researchers led by Laurent Gizon from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research and the University of Göttingen, for the first time, measured the oblateness of this slow-rotating star, which is 5,000 light years away.
Oblateness refers to the flatness of the star at the poles. The star was measured using asteroseismology, a technique of studying the oscillations of stars. It was found that the Sun rotates for a 27-day period and its radius at the equator is greater than that at the pole.
On the other hand, Kepler 11145123 was found to rotate slowly and its size was double the Sun's. The difference in the radius between the equator and the pole was found to be just 3 km.
The slow rotation of the star is said to be responsible for keeping its spherical shape unharmed. "This makes Kepler 11145123 the roundest natural object ever measured, even more round than the Sun," Gizon said.
Distant star is roundest object ever observed in nature http://www.mps.mpg.de/distant-star-is-roundest-object-ever-observed-in-nature
Clips, images credit: ESO, ESA/HUBBLE, NASA & Mark A. Garlick
